Politics

"If nothing is done to counter present trends, the major fault line in American politics will no longer be between Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives. It will be between the 'establishment'—political insiders, power brokers, the heads of American business, Wall Street, and the mainstream media—and an increasingly mad-as-hell populace determined to 'take back America' from them."

"The two-party system is breaking down into a race system."

"State capitalism would be a step forward as compared with the present state of affairs in our Soviet Republic. If in approximately six months’ time state capitalism became established in our Republic, this would be a great success and a sure guarantee that within a year socialism will have gained a permanently firm hold."

"Three-fourths of the Italian economy, industrial and agricultural, is in the hands of the state. And if I dare to introduce to Italy state capitalism or state socialism, which is the reverse side of the medal, I will have the necessary subjective and objective conditions to do it."

"Under a system of ‘state–controlled capitalism,’ or mixed economy, large companies can avoid normal evolutionary processes by hooking up with state power in order to direct, regulate, and micromanage the economy. And if they skirt bankruptcy, they can be declared “too big to fail,” showered with billions in taxpayer bailouts, and quickly taught that bad behavior is richly rewarded."

"If we are to keep the term ‘capitalism’ at all, then, we must distinguish between ‘free-market capitalism’ on the one hand, and ‘state capitalism’ on the other. The two are as different as day and night in their nature and consequences. Free-market capitalism is a network of free and voluntary exchanges in which producers work, produce, and exchange their products for the products of others through prices voluntarily arrived at. State capitalism consists of one or more groups making use of the coercive apparatus of the government — the State — to accumulate capital for themselves by expropriating the production of others by force and violence."

"Let me examine the alleged "distinction from capitalism" characteristic of the Soviet Union and see whether it isn't a distinction from a certain stage of capitalism rather than from capitalism as a whole. The determining factor in analyzing the class nature of a society is not whether the means of production are the private property of the capitalist class or are state-owned, but whether the means of production ... are monopolized and alienated from the direct producers. The Soviet Government occupies in relation to the whole economic system the position which a capitalist occupies in relation to a single enterprise. ... "Bureaucratic state socialism" is an irrational expression behind which there exists the real economic relation of state-capitalist-exploiter to the propertyless exploited."

"I think it is only because capitalism has proved so enormously more efficient than alternative methods that is has survived at all. ... I'm not sure capitalism is the right word. There is a sense in which every society is capitalist. The Soviet Union was capitalist, but it was state capitalism. Latin American societies in the past have been capitalist, but it has been oligarchic capitalism. So what we really need to talk about is not capitalism but free market or competitive capitalism which is the system that we would like to have adopted, not just capitalism."

"Thus by 1925, both Leninism and Fascism, variants of Marxism, had created political and economic systems that shared singular properties… Both sought order and disciple of entire populations in the service of an exclusivistic party and an ideology that found its origins in classical Marxism… Both created a kind of ‘state capitalism,’ informed by a unitary party, and responsible to a ‘charismatics’ leader.”"

"What about a rule requiring less than unanimity but more than a bare majority? Might not a rule be found, as Rousseau suggested, that would balance the need for speed with the seriousness of the matter to be decided? These intermediate supermajority solutions are, however, subject to several objections. First, by allowing a minority to veto a majority decision they reduce the number of citizens who can exercise self-determination, which as Majoitarian pointed out is maximized by majority rule. Second, nothing short of unanimity will get around the intractable problem of voting cycles. Third, as Majoritarian also pointed out, supermajority requirements privilege that status quo and that preserve existing injustices against reform by a majority decision."

"I have no idea how John figured out how to make a living," says Tony Schuman, another Urban Deadliner. "I remember times when the electricity was shut off in his apartment because he was so wrapped up in this stuff that he hadn't bothered to find paying work. We were eating rice and beans."

"@Cryptomeorg: Cryptome is a free library operated and funded by two independent scholars. Not herd corraling NGO, leak site or commercial media, maverick. (17 October 2015)"

"@Cryptomeorg: Hillary could be hit with complicity in scheduling the Bin Laden killing to re-elect Obama. (17 October 2015)"

"Young: If you watch all these hyperbolic agendas, Snowden, Wikileaks, Greenwald, they copy government. It's the same kind of hustle of the public where they pretend to be in opposition when they're in cahoots."

"Young: We wouldn't do this if we didn't want to piss people off."

"Natsios: Our collaboration started some time late in 1993. We went online in the Internet's early infancy, its seminal moments. Quite quickly we became involved in these new online environments and communities that were positioning themselves on the front line of the politics of information. John's involvement with the Cypherpunk Listserv was a transformative moment."

"@Cryptomeorg: Question for Cryptome: "what do you do?" Might be glorified as counterintelligence but counter mirrors spy perfidy. (25 October 2015)"

"Natsios:Architects are by and large engaged in a kind of ornamental politics—a telegenic, photogenic and glossy politics that is unerringly safe. They won't put their careers on the line, they won't be visited by the authorities, they won't be subpoenaed for a federal criminal trial—all of which has happened to us."

"Young: Cypherpunk was completely different from anything that existed at the time. It was all about taking over the world by undermining institutions and authorities."

"Young: We're great advocates of plagiarism and stealing."

"Young: Cryptome, aspiring to be a free public library, accepts that libraries are chock full of contaminated material, hoaxes, forgeries, propaganda."

"Natsios: We find that increasingly because of legal and financial pressures, institutionalized freedom of information groups become quite inflexible, not agile, not tactical enough."

"Young: The reality is that there's big business in branding dissent and whistle-blowing."

"Natsios: We are required by state laws as architects to police issues of public health, safety and welfare. This is in the name of the public good. From Cryptome's perspective, we are obliged as architects to police the police, if you will. We are obliged to dissent, as required for the public good."

"We prefer being independent agents: We prefer that agility, we prefer that daily lack of master-plan agitation, and not being limited by the annual report obligations upon freedom of information non-profits; we have no annual report."

"Michael Crowley:When I asked John Young if there was anything he wouldn't reveal on his site -- a fault in the President's Secret Service detail, for instance -- he said, "Well, I'm actually looking for that information right now.""

"John Young: Don’t send us stuff and think that we’ll protect you."

"Deborah Natsios: I think it's interesting looked at in terms of large technosystem theory, the NSA taken as a large technosystem, this operative being something of a prosthetic extension of hardware. Snowden being understood as a kind of cyborgian creature without any political intuition. There's a kind of shock now in the system, now that this piece of hardware has suddenly, you know, gone rogue. And a person of his status, his age, his youth, there seems to be an incredible bias about their having any political voice. It's a key threshold for him to have broken out of his little enclosure and committed the act of conscience. Presumably the cyborg has no conscience, they're just kind of artificially intelligenced. And that's why if he's to be a hero in the literary sense, it's based on this act of conscience argument that he's deploying."

"John Young: Cryptome is not an authoritative source. It’s a source of imaginatory material. Don’t trust Cryptome, we lie to you helplessly. Don’t believe anything you see there."

"John Young: I don't acknowledge the power of the law."

"Glenn Greenwald: John Young occasionally does some repellent and demented things - such as posting the home addresses of Laura Poitras, Bart Gellman and myself along with maps pointing to our homes."

"Gawker: In a post on Cryptome, you suggested the leak was a "wargame". Do you think that this might be an elaborate government test? Young: Well, it will certainly be used for that purpose. They're certainly watching the response to this. They not only run their own games, they watch other people's games. Some are fortuitous like this. Some are deliberate. Natsios: I like this notion of the spontaneously combusting war games scenario. It's not top-down driven, it's just erupts and you study it as a phenomenon and information emerges that wouldn't otherwise in the carefully scripted modeling scenario."

"John Young: Facts are not a trustworthy source of knowledge."

"See, it's standard tradecraft in the spy world to be extremely cooperative to people who are expecting resistance. You just offer all possible help, and they just walk right into it. Did you really think I'd let you interview me, rather than me interview you? I'm plumbing your data. I've learned a lot about how Radar operates. I'm just doing the usual shit that agents do to recruit other agents."

"John Young: My mentor, Jean-Paul Sartre, said that imagination is the only thing you can trust."

"My defense is, I don't know what these documents are."

"There's nothing that should be secret. Period."

"We're totally untrustworthy. We may be a sting operation, we may be working for the Feds. If you trust us, you're stupid."

"Authority was the enemy. That's [my] psychological background."

"They say, 'Don't believe that, it's just standard fare. It's a ploy.' If you believe any of this, you don't understand how spies operate. They lie so much and run so many false operations and plant so many false agents. They expose their own agents so much - there's nothing you can do that they haven't already done. In fact, they hope you will do it. To muddy the waters."

"We'll put up anything that no one else wants to put up"

"John Young: There are no secrets that shouldn’t be published."

"John Young to WikiLeaks: Fuck your cute hustle and disinformation campaign against legitimate dissent. Same old shit, working for the enemy."

"John Young: Human activity is built on tricking and being tricked. Those who don’t hoodwink are evil people up to no good. I certainly expect to be hoodwinked. I’ll do it, too."

"Young: I have done architectural work for Scientologists in NYC. Also for Church of Christ Scientists, Opus Dei, Baptists, Episcopaleans, Atheists, Socialists, Black Panthers, 5 Percenters, Mafia, Muslims, Communists and so forth."

"John Young: I don't drink water. Why drink water when there is alcohol?"

"John Young: This redaction is some reputation-building shit and WikiLeaks is a coward for adopting this mode. They promised never to do that. And now they are doing that. And why? Because there is money in it and reputation in it, and they want to be part of the players."

"Cryptome is not trustworthy, and lies."

"Cryptome welcomes documents for publication that are prohibited by governments worldwide, in particular material on freedom of expression, privacy, cryptology, dual-use technologies, national security, intelligence, and secret governance -- open, secret and classified documents -- but not limited to those."

"John Young: I’m a member of WikiLeaks. I’m an insider of WikiLeaks. I’m a devotee of WikiLeaks. I’m a critic of WikiLeaks. My current shtick is to pretend that I am an opponent of WikiLeaks."